I’ve been pretty vocal in my criticism of the Police Commissioner, but never the actual police. 

However, yesterday my brother had an experience that makes me question what on earth is going on inside the police force at the moment.  

Yesterday morning my brother was dropping his son and his son’s mate to school around 8am. My brother’s friend who's just flown back into the country was on speaker phone in the car, telling them all about his trip, when my brother notices a paddy wagon surging up behind, lights flashing, 4 or 5 cops inside.  

He immediately pulls over to let them pass, assuming they’re after someone ahead and he wants to get out of their way. But the wagon pulls in behind his car. A female officer hops out, comes over and says to my brother – “you’re on your phone.” 

He says, “it’s a hands free call, it’s coming through the car speaker.” 

She says, “no, you had the phone up to your ear.” 

He says, “no I’ve never had it at my ear, it’s been on speaker, my boys can testify to that because we were all listening to the conversation.” She’s not having it, the officer arks up all of a sudden angry and says, “You were on your phone, holding it.. I’m prepared to go to court over it.” So now my brother is shocked at what the hell is going on here. Her level of aggression and tone is so intense.  

But he knows he’s in the right, he knows he wasn’t holding his phone, so he replies, “I’m prepared to go to court over it too”. 

She remains defiant. My brother says to her, “I know for a fact I wasn’t holding my phone because my son was holding my phone because he was using one of my apps at the time of the call.” She gets more irate, “no you had it at your ear.” My brother says, it was categorically not at his ear. She argues it was.  

So at this point he’s like, “wait a minute, my hand to my ear is different to my phone to my ear – if my hand was at my ear I would’ve been scratching it, or flicking my hair behind it.” Aware she’s losing this argument – which by the way should never have even been an argument, she then says – “open all the car windows so I can see the children properly and if they’re in appropriate car seats.” 

He winds down the windows to reveal the two boys are in fact teenagers and well beyond car seat age. She then says she needs to check the car is his. She runs a plate check and confirms it is. She then says she will not fine him today, on this occasion she will ‘let him off with a warning’ .. but that he ‘should set a better example for his children.’ 

He replies that he’s perfectly comfortable with the example he’s setting his children. Can you believe this attitude and aggression from the police? 

What the hell is going on with them? Why are they nowhere to be seen when there're real crimes like burglaries, assaults, gangs blocking streets, homeless bothering retailers, ram raiders, drug dealers, .. there's so much crime going on at the moment that the police are not attending, how is it 4 or 5 of them have got all that time to stop and interrogate a law abiding Dad driving his kids to school?  

And as for the tone - to threaten court action? Are you kidding me? Just what sort of police are we turning out these days? How is this sort of attitude acceptable?